A month to the day, we laid my wife’s grandfather to final rest. After, we went to his home one final time in look on all that was there, to divide and spread amongst the families all that might be wanted before the rest was auctioned, given, or thrown away.
Outside of his home was little shed where he went to be alone, to spend time with himself and too with his memories—memorabilia of a sport he loved. All the ceiling and surfaces of desks and cabinets were covered in hats—collected and gathered, received as gifts, for the years he spent umpiring softball across the country. Autographed bats, autographed balls (most given away at his wake for memento and memory), newspaper clippings of games and honors from aspect of his life I never knew.
“Take what you want,” my mother-in-law told us.
I looked at the hats, decades old, and wondered—what becomes of the collections we gather in life and are left to be divided after we are gone? What are my hats?
My collections, my hats, are books. I doubt that they’ll be wanted. Only at my urging has one of my children borrowed, or received, a book I offered for story or thought lessons. What will become of them? They will probably be burned—not worth the space it takes to save; all the wisdom within, life given in write and too in read saved upon their pages.
I have shelves, and desktop cover, of journals written in my hand—one very few can read. What will become of them? Will they be divided amongst my children—grandchildren not yet arrived and in our lives? Will they be read? Will they like the person they have found?
I don’t know. I’ll be gone—it’s not my worry.
Then, I looked at the hats—all the memories, moments, and life-saving embodied in an object. What becomes of them? Who would want them? What might they mean to another?
I wondered.
My wife and children each gathered a few that caught attention and their eyes.
I, myself, took none. They would sit upon a shelf, away in a closet—I don’t change my hats. Mostly, I wear a single one, a UCM baseball hat given to me by my sons as an extra from a baseball camp. It means something to me because of them and it’s the reason why it’s worn.
Still, there were others who made me think of friends. Maybe they would like them, but how do you initiate?
Here, I found this hat, and it made me think of you. I don’t know why, but I thought that you might like it, and I wanted you to have it.
Who wants a gift from out of the blue that’s old and worn and used—old hats, old words?
Who might like the hat and the meaning that it shared? Who might like my words? Of the hat, I’ll never know. I did not take a one. I did not share as gifts. But of my words—from the thought—I share them now.
